Okono Kitahama is a character in the Lady Snowblood story, which began as a Japanese manga before being adapted into a live-action film in 1973. She is part of the small group of criminals whose actions set the entire revenge plot in motion. During the early Meiji period, when the government's first conscription edict stirs unrest across the countryside, Okono joins Banzō Takemura, Gishirō Tsukamoto, and Shokei Tokuichi in exploiting the confusion to swindle money from farmers. The same four people murder the schoolteacher Gō Kashima and his young son and assault Gō's wife Sayo. Tokuichi is eventually killed by Sayo in self-defense, but Okono escapes alongside Takemura and Tsukamoto, and her name becomes one of the three remaining targets on the list that Yuki, the daughter born to Sayo in prison, is raised to hunt down.

By the time the story catches up with her, Okono's circumstances have deteriorated significantly. She works as the madam of a low-end brothel, and in the film version she serves as the proprietress of an establishment called Kagetsu, which operates as the center of her activities. Her life has fallen into poverty and a grim daily struggle to get by, and she is haunted by the memory of what she and her accomplices did. She lives in constant fear that her past will catch up with her, and that fear shapes her personality. She is deeply suspicious of strangers, avoids drawing attention to herself, and deflects any question about her history. She is especially wary of anything connected to the Kashima family or to Gishirō Tsukamoto, whose later rise to wealth and status stands in sharp contrast to her own decline.

Okono's primary motivation is self-preservation. She is not driven by ambition, ideology, or loyalty, but by the wish to avoid punishment for her crime. When the journalist Ryūrei Ashio publishes the story of Lady Snowblood as bait arranged by the priest Dōkai, Okono takes the publication as a direct threat. In the film, she responds by sending her henchmen to abduct Ashio and torture him until he reveals Yuki's location, and she personally supervises the interrogation. This places her in the story as the second of Yuki's remaining targets to be confronted, after Takemura.

Her confrontation with Yuki ends badly. In the film, Yuki storms Kagetsu to rescue Ashio, killing several of Okono's men in the process. Okono tries to escape but is eventually found hanged, whether by her own hand or made to appear so by an unseen figure who has been manipulating her from the shadows. Yuki, enraged at being denied the chance to kill her herself, slices the hanged body in half. In the original manga the outcome is different: there, Yuki does not kill Okono but instead ruins her financially, driving her into bankruptcy. The two versions therefore treat her fate differently, with the film giving her a more violent and direct end.

Okono is not a warrior and possesses no notable combat skill. Her abilities lie in authority and manipulation. She holds a position of control over her establishment, commands guards and strong-armed men who carry out her orders, and is willing to use torture and intimidation to protect herself. Her own attempts to resist Yuki are ineffective, and her reliance on fear and self-interest leaves her isolated when her protection fails. Her relationship with Yuki is that of a hunted criminal facing her victim's avenger; her relationship with Ashio is that of a tormentor and captor; and her relationship with her former accomplices is defined by shared guilt, mutual wariness, and the very different fates they have come to meet. Over the course of the story she moves from being an active participant in the original crime to a desperate, cornered woman whose past finally catches up with her.